made before him. He had won a county and a noble city, and he had
won them, in the ideas of his own age, with honour. Are we to
believe that he sullied his conquest by putting his late
competitors, his present guests, to death by poison? They died
conveniently for him, and they died in his own house. Such a death
was strange; but strange things do happen. William gradually came
to shrink from no crime for which he could find a technical
defence; but no advocate could have said anything on behalf of the
poisoning of Walter and Biota. Another member of the house of
Maine, Margaret the betrothed of his son Robert, died about the
same time; and her at least William had every motive to keep alive.
One who was more dangerous than Walter, if he suffered anything,
only suffered banishment. Of Geoffrey of Mayenne we hear no more
till William had again to fight for the possession of Maine.


William had thus, in the year 1063, reached the height of his power
and fame as a continental prince. In a conquest on Gaulish soil he
had rehearsed the greater conquest which he was before long to make
beyond sea. Three years, eventful in England, outwardly uneventful
in Normandy, still part us from William's second visit to our
shores. But in the course of these three years one event must have
happened, which, without a blow being struck or a treaty being
signed, did more for his hopes than any battle or any treaty. At
some unrecorded time, but at a time which must come within these
years, Harold Earl of the West-Saxons became the guest and the man
of William Duke of the Normans.